U.S., Europe Team Up Against Cyber Crime

The U.S. Secret Service and the European Union have announced they will create a joint task force charged with preventing identity theft, hacking and other cyber crimes.

According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, the unit will be based in Rome. It will team up with an Italian anti-cyber-crime police unit and the Italian post office Poste Italiane, which has developed software that can track electronic payments. The software is designed to comb through money transfers performed over the Internet for suspicious signs, such as an account being opened by the same person in several different places.

The European Electronic Crime Task Force's main job will be to group together the cyber-crime efforts of the European Union nations and the U.S., bolstering defenses against computer attacks on embassies and other government sites that host sensitive computer systems such as air-traffic control. It will also monitor computer networks for threats, as well as deal with attacks once they happen, said the Journal article.